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Likelihood to Recommend

AlienVault OSSIM

If this is your first experience with a SIEM, this one can get you started. Take the time to learn the ins and outs of the product and you'll most likely be satisfied with it if your company is an SMB. If you need compliance reports, OSSIM is too small for you, you'll need to go with USM or USM Anywhere.

Armor

Armor gives you what you need to be successful regardless of technical ability. If you can maintain the systems yourself, you are definitely ahead of the game with their service. If you're not prepared to configure and maintain the systems, they do a pretty good job of getting it set up during the onboarding process so that you don't need to dig into the technical guts too much. If you find yourself in over your head, their support staff can handle it for you in most cases.

Centralized event and log data collection

Correlation

Event and log normalization

Deployment flexibility

Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools

AlienVault OSSIM

7.5

Armor

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Custom dashboards and views

AlienVault OSSIM

8.0

Armor

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Host and network-based intrusion detection

AlienVault OSSIM

8.6

Armor

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Pros

Most of the configuration comes out-of-the-box suited for most environments. Setting it up is really easy, with the wizard, you can have it working in less than 3 hours of deployment, without counting asset installation.

Out-of-the-box dashboards are really useful. You can modify or add new widgets to suit your needs, but you'll most likely agree with what already comes configured.

Cons

The correlation directives that come out of the box are very few. I understand more correlation directives are a premium product, but one can hardly see the value of having very few. It makes new customers think they will not get better directives when they switch to the full USM or USM Anywhere.

Same with reports, the few reports it comes out of the box can be retrieved using other tools that are better prepared for the task. I understand that compliance reports aren't free, but at least I'd expect more security reports.

The OTX tab in dashboards sometimes takes too long to load, even if you have a fast internet and plenty of resources in the VM.

We would like to see some more granular pricing options for data storage. All of Armor's storage is high-speed and high-availability. While some of our content requires this, much of our content does not. Paying a premium for storage capabilities we do not need is a problem.

Usability

AlienVault OSSIM8.0

Based on 1 answer

AlienVault OSSIM is far easy to use and manage - provided you know what you're doing. As any SIEM application, there is some background knowledge required in order to take advantage of the product's functionalities, such as the log correlation and analysis. Other than that, the application is quite usable and robust.

Alternatives Considered

AlienVault OSSIM has the upper ante in initial deployment price, being that it's open source. Also, with perhaps the exception of SolarWinds, it has a lower optimal requirements for onsite deployment, hence your OPEX won't be hit very hard by investing in new hardware to suit the appliance. The correlation engine is somewhat more robust that their counterparts in LogRhythm and SolarWinds, and the IDS (both NIDS and HIDS) are more reliable as well in terms of results. Finally, although Tenable SecurityCenter is more robust in dashboards, alerts and reports, it comes short in front of OSSIM in terms of real-time IDS and SIEM correlation.

Return on Investment

The ROI of OSSIM itself is, obviously, immediate, being that it's a free, open-source product. However, you must take into account other inherent investments to cover up for the lack of official support, such as certified agents or consultants that take care of the management and maintenance of the product once in production.

On the other hand, the potential loss of information and interruption of operativity due to malware and other threats is really unmeasurable. The implicit savings in OSSIM as a SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) are really the major positive impact on your organization's revenue.

Finally, and from a reseller's point of view, reselling OSSIM has the big plus of being a professional services-only asset, given that the appliance itself is free of charge. The only thing to consider is the initial investment in team members with the required capacitation and knowledge to address such professional services to potential customers.